I Killed Zoe Spanos Review and Favourite Quotes

June 25, 2020June 29, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

Thanks to NetGalley, McElderry Books and Kit Frick for providing the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I Killed Zoe Spanos
Publisher: McElderry Books
Release date: 30 June 2020
Genre: Young Adult Mystery, Thriller

Panda Rating:

“The YA thriller of the summer.” —Bustle
For fans of Sadie and Serial, this gripping thriller follows two teens whose lives become inextricably linked when one confesses to murder and the other becomes determined to uncover the real truth no matter the cost.

What happened to Zoe won’t stay buried…
When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl who has been missing since New Year’s Eve. Anna bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, and her mere presence in town stirs up still-raw feelings about the unsolved case. As Anna delves deeper into the mystery, stepping further and further into Zoe’s life, she becomes increasingly convinced that she and Zoe are connected—and that she knows what happened to her.
Two months later, Zoe’s body is found in a nearby lake, and Anna is charged with manslaughter. But Anna’s confession is riddled with holes, and Martina Green, teen host of the Missing Zoe podcast, isn’t satisfied. Did Anna really kill Zoe? And if not, can Martina’s podcast uncover the truth? Inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Kit Frick weaves a thrilling story of psychological suspense that twists and turns until the final page

Note: The quotes below are taken from an advanced/unfinished copy and are subject to change in the final version.

“I have something better to do this summer, someone better to become.”

#WWWWednesday: 24 June

June 24, 2020June 24, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:

What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

Since last Wednesday I’ve managed to finish four books. The majority of my reads are still for blog tours, which I’m surprised to have completed well ahead of my dates this week, but I also read two romances because my mood told me to!

The Crow Rider (The Storm Crow #2) by Kalyn Josephson ★★★½
This was a really satisfying conclusion to this duology. We get more strong friendships, some character growth, intriguing revelations, an awesome battle, and plenty more crow magic with a cheeky little crow that will steal your heart. Friday is my stop on the blog tour so be on the look out for my review then!

Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne ★★★½
I picked this up immediately after the lovely Emer suggested it in part one of her rom com recs. This was my second book by Layne and I thoroughly enjoyed it! This was easy to speed through in one sitting and was great for a laugh. I loved the characters and there was just the right amount of angst. Although the ending felt rushed and “too easy” this was still a fun romcom with great banter and quirky characters. Review coming very soon!

I Knew You Were Trouble by Lauren Layne ★★★½
I decided to read another book by Layne after finishing Walk of Shame and again, this was easy to quickly devour in one sitting. The level of angst in this one was a bit higher but the chemistry was undeniable and the antagonistic banter was just as good! I loved our hero, Nick 💜 Although this is book four in a series it can definitely be read as a standalone because I didn’t read the other three before this. Review coming very soon!

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick ★★★½
I have to admit to being a bit disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I’d hoped especially with the ‘big reveal’/ending. It’s said to be for fans of Sadie and while I get it with the mixed media format, that was a bit of the extent of it. I was surprised by how eerily atmospheric Frick’s writing was though and this was definitely not the typical sunshine and wealth Hamptons that we’re used to seeing. Although I struggled at the start, once the pace picked up I sped through it. I know I’m in the minority with my opinion though and I think it’ll be a big summer hit. My stop on the blog tour is TOMORROW so be sure to look out for my review then 😉

#TopTenTuesday Turns 10: A Trip Down Top10 Memory Lane!

June 23, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads41 Comments

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Top Ten Tuesday Turns 10! Option 1: pick a past TTT topic you’ve done and re-do/update it (Perhaps you’d remove certain books you put on the list back when you first wrote it, or perhaps you have 10 MORE books you’d add to that list now. You could also re-visit TBR posts, whether seasonal or series you need to finish, etc., and tell us if you’ve read them yet or not. Any variation of this idea works. Feel free to be creative.) Option 2: pick a past TTT topic you wish you’d done, but didn’t get a chance to do (the list of topics is below).

Happy Birthday, TTT! What an incredible feat to have such a successful weekly meme that has been running for 10 years with over 500 topics. Very inspiring 🥰 I remember the first time I came across a TTT post and thought wow, I wanna join in the fun! It was in the ‘early days’ of my blogging journey and I remember questioning whether I would even be allowed to do the TTT posts because I was a total noob! Then I remember writing it in March and saying that I suck at making lists (and that’s still very true) and because of that I thought I might not do TTTs regularly. Well, more than one year later and I’ve only missed a small handful of topics and it has quickly become my favourite weekly meme. I’m so glad that I didn’t let my noob fears stop me from doing it and I’ve discovered so many new blogs/blogging friends through it. It has been an awesome experience being part of an amazing community and I hope to continue with it every week for as long as this blog is alive 💜💙💜

For this week’s topic I decided to go with a slightly tweaked version of option one and share with you a list of ten of the TTTs that I’ve done including the very first one. I might include updated notes or comments on some of these but not all because (let’s be real) I’m lazy AF and some of them might not need any changing/updating!

So without further ado, let’s take that stroll down Top10 (memory) lane!

#5OnMyTBR: LGBTQ+ History

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Hello Mondays, welcome back to #5OnMyTBR, a meme created by the wonderful E @ The Local Bee Hunter’s Nook. This bookish meme gets us to dig even further into our TBRs by simply posting about five books on our TBR! You can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!

This week’s prompt is: LGBTQ+ History (non-fiction or historical novels) ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

Goodreads Monday – The Summer Children by Dot Hutchinson

June 22, 2020June 22, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s featured book is The Summer Children (The Collector #3) by Dot Hutchinson. This is book three in thriller/horror The Collector series and has an impressive 4.28 rating on Goodreads!

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp

June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads7 Comments

We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

I’ll be spending the rest of this Sunday in bed with I Killed Zoe Spanos. I’m reading this for the blog tour coming up next week but for reasons that I’m sure have 100% to do with my mood, I’m struggling to get into it. I put it down to read something else last week but I’m hoping that when I pick it up now I’ll find it easier to get into! It’s being compared to Sadie and I loved that book so I’m hoping I’ll end up loving this one too!

This gripping thriller follows two teens whose lives become inextricably linked when one confesses to murder and the other becomes determined to uncover the real truth no matter the cost.

What happened to Zoe won’t stay buried…
When Anna Cicconi arrives to the small Hamptons village of Herron Mills for a summer nanny gig, she has high hopes for a fresh start. What she finds instead is a community on edge after the disappearance of Zoe Spanos, a local girl who has been missing since New Year’s Eve. Anna bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, and her mere presence in town stirs up still-raw feelings about the unsolved case. As Anna delves deeper into the mystery, stepping further and further into Zoe’s life, she becomes increasingly convinced that she and Zoe are connected–and that she knows what happened to her.
Two months later, Zoe’s body is found in a nearby lake, and Anna is charged with manslaughter. But Anna’s confession is riddled with holes, and Martina Green, teen host of the Missing Zoe podcast, isn’t satisfied. Did Anna really kill Zoe? And if not, can Martina’s podcast uncover the truth?

What are you currently reading?

Top 5 Saturday: Books I Need to Finish!

June 20, 2020June 20, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads25 Comments

We’re back with another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: books I’d give a second chance.

But as we know by now I don’t normally DNF books for a number of reasons but mostly guilt. Most of the time I power through that baddie and just “get it over with” (which also doesn’t sound great), but that’s also a longer discussion for another time! So since I don’t have (m)any DNFs to choose from, I decided to dig deep into memory banks and recall the books that I have put to the side but am determined to (eventually) finish!

As a mood reader, it can be pretty tough to stick to a book when my mood is swinging wildly all over the place. It doesn’t happen often because most of the time I settle into a book/story and I end up really enjoying the read and my moods quickly “calm down”… But when my moods are particularly erratic, I usually end up jumping through at least 5-10 books until I find one I can handle (this is making me sound insane, right? Lol). Most of these were put down because my mood just wouldn’t comply and I ended up repeatedly re-reading passages until I decided it’s not for now. Without any more waffling, here we go:

Review: The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson

June 20, 2020June 19, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads19 Comments

Goodreads: The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow #1)
Published: 15 July 2019
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Panda Rating:

In the tropical kingdom of Rhodaire, magical, elemental Crows are part of every aspect of life…until the Illucian empire invades, destroying everything.

That terrible night has thrown Princess Anthia into a deep depression. Her sister Caliza is busy running the kingdom after their mother’s death, but all Thia can do is think of all she has lost.

But when Caliza is forced to agree to a marriage between Thia and the crown prince of Illucia, Thia is finally spurred into action. And after stumbling upon a hidden Crow egg in the rubble of a rookery, she and her sister devise a dangerous plan to hatch the egg in secret and get back what was taken from them.

First Lines Friday – 19 June

June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“I have a fatal flaw.
I like to think we all do. Or at least that makes it easier for me when I’m writing–building my heroines and heroes up around this one self-sabotaging trait, hinging everything that happens to them on a specific characteristic: the thing they learned to do to protect themselves and can’t let go of, even when it stops serving them.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#WWWWednesday: 18 June

June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

For the second week in a row I somehow forgot to share my #WWWWednesday posts as it completely slips my mind! Oops… So even though it’s Thursday I thought I’d still share my update!

Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:

What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

Since two weeks have passed I’ve managed to read more books than has been ‘the usual’ for me this year. This is mostly because of the blog tours I’m participating in and in the last weeks, there have been quite a few! Sadly, it’s still mostly because of those books that I’m pushing myself to read, but otherwise my moods have been in such disarray that I don’t know what I feel like reading, and that’s if I feel like reading at all! 😔 But before I go off on an even bigger tangent, here’s what I’ve read over the last two weeks. I can’t believe I’m about to say this but I’m not including two books that I DNF’d–yep, you read that right! I finally made the decision to DNF two books. Perhaps it’s my erratic mood but I just couldn’t connect with them and it was such a struggle to read one page after another, so I decided to put them away. I feel pretty guilty still but I know I made the right decision!

Promises Forged (Venators #2) by Devri Walls ★★★★½
The sequel to book one was just as fast-paced and full of action, along with some very satisfying character growth! I enjoyed book one but loved book two and can’t wait for the third! Read my full review.

The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones by Daven McQueen ★★★★½
This was equal parts heart-wrenching and heartwarming. This historical YA is so relevant to everything that’s happening right now. McQueen’s writing was wholly atmospheric and both Ethan and Juniper Jones will steal your heart. Read my full review.

Half Life by Lillian Clark ★★★½
This ended up being more of a contemporary with hints of sci-fi rather than the full-on sci-fi that I was expecting. It was still a really good read and I loved the concept and Clark’s observations on perception/truth. That said, I wanted more from the ending! Read my full review.

The Kinder Poison (The Kinder Poison #1) by Natalie Mae ★★★★½
This is probably my favourite YA fantasy read of 2020 so far. It sucked me in from the very beginning and didn’t let go until it spit me out, flabbergasted and clambering for more, at the very end! It had an interesting quest-style plot, loveable complex characters, and magic. Can has book two naow, pls? Read my full review.

The Storm Crow (Storm Crow #1) by Kalyn Josephson ★★★½
I’m so glad I finally picked this one up after having it sit on my shelf since its release! While the world building could’ve been better, I liked learning about the characters and loved the crow magic. I’m very curious to see how everything is resolved in the final book of this duology. Review coming very soon!

Royal Decoy (Fate of Eyrinthia #1) by Heather Frost ★★★☆☆
I can’t remember the last time I read a romantasy but this book has sparked up my interest in the sub-genre! It’s a fast paced fantasy with a deliciously slow burn romance. While it’s a bit cookie cutter to what’s out there in the fantasy world, it was still an enjoyable read! Read my full review.